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Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West is a 1985 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. In this, his most critically acclaimed work, McCarthy reworks the cowboy western and historical fiction genres, elevating them, with his style, to the status of high literature-a hallmark move of the "postmodern" American writing of the 1980s. Blood Meridian follows its teenaged protagonist, "the kid," as he travels across the American southwest and northern Mexico in the late 1840s. The kid witnesses and participates in acts of extreme violence, especially alongside the Glanton Gang, a group of murders and scalp hunters led by the evil Judge Holden. The members of the Glanton Gang and Judge Holden are based on historical individuals. Some have interpreted the novel as a comment on the expansionist doctrine of "manifest destiny," an ideology that had renewed relevance in the context 1980s American foreign policy. Though reviews were tepid at time of publication, a number of prominent critics have named Blood Meridian among the century's greatest novels.
